


See You in Salt Lake

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Gen, Hallucinations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam Winchester's Wall, Stanford University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9344342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: Sam wants a normal life. Dean wants it for him. Even Stanford, when he returns six years and countless deaths later, seems to support Sam leaving hunting behind forever…if only his hell-scarred soul can cooperate.Written for Supernatural Summergen 2016 on LiveJournal.





	

When Sam returned to Stanford, the sight of the campus broke over him as a tide of joy unlike anything he’d ever thought to feel again—wild, recklessly optimistic, and inexplicably mixed with pain.

Well, not so inexplicably, maybe. It was hard to part from Dean, and the soul he’d so recently reclaimed was scarred, erratic, its worst memories seeping to the surface whenever Sam wasn't working hard to suppress them. Hell lived just at the corner of his eye, bubbling up beneath the surface of his dreams. What he'd done when soulless mixed with the hell imagery in Fellini-esque, nonsensical sequences—him but not him, real because it happened, surreal because his mind could not contain it, even if his soul could.

He shook off the dark thoughts—he was practiced at this—and watched the guest lecturer finish her introduction and turn on a slideshow presentation. It was an excellently reasoned, informative speech. Even if Sam had only a corner of his mind to give to listening, his hunter's eye reaped many details, one being that the professor was... well. Sexy. Not something Sam had often thought of Stanford professors, at least not to this degree. Her business suit, sensible haircut and minimal makeup couldn’t conceal a lingerie-model-curvy body, full lips, and features that were somehow lush and sensual. She didn't fit the scholar stereotype. Which, attractive though she was, made her less his type, and more...

Dean's, he realized. She was just the kind of woman Dean liked. Maybe that explained it. Shortly after he'd settled in for the lecture, he'd had the weirdest feeling that Dean was here. Impossible. He'd received a text less than two hours ago that Dean was in Wisconsin, taking a quick break after closing a case before finding a new one. He never gave Sam details, keeping things light and funny, asking in veiled, Winchester terms about Sam's well-being. It was necessarily limited, but Dean liked to check in on Sam, and Sam of course worried about Dean, and Cas-the-evil-overlord, and Bobby, and...

And. Nothing. They'd agreed to this. Sam was out. He'd saved the world already, and Dean agreed; he'd paid his dues. They'd included his soul, even if he'd gotten it back—eventually, and much the worse for wear. He wouldn't have gone of his own accord, but Dean insisted, and Sam had come to see he was right. Dean would never do anything else. He'd had his chance, he said, with Lisa, and look how that had turned out. He was in it for the long haul. And he had Bobby. They could handle Cas, and whatever else came their way.

Sam couldn’t, though. That was the obvious implication, and as Sam gave the wound on his hand a light reminder-squeeze, he had to agree. He was on the edge. No, over it. He was broken. As Dean said, he needed time and space to put himself back together again, and finishing what he’d started at Stanford seemed like a good way. He’d thought they wouldn’t let him back in, or at least that he’d have to cheat or hack a lot of it, but it had been easy. His academic record was still there, as if nothing, death or hell or apocalypse, stood between him and his college years. No lying required—or at least not much.

His symptoms were so much like PTSD—well, it _was_ that—that he'd made it part of his history when he'd come back to Stanford. His one “hack” was registering as a disabled veteran, and whenever he felt a twinge of guilt for lying, saying he'd seen action in protection of his country, he thought of Dean, who’d hotly informed him that it was not a lie at all. It was merely misleading, because he _had_ given his all to protect not just America, but the world. Anyway, if he freaked out, he now had a built-in excuse. 

Take this woman, the guest lecturer. What was it about her that disturbed him? It was more than her sexiness, or that she was Dean's type. She was speaking about ethics in the media and their application to the world economy, and despite her balanced approach, he felt something in her that wanted to be... black and white, rather than the landscape of gray area was ethics as an academic topic. She was by-the-book, it was right or it was wrong and it was a monster and you killed it. 

No, Sam sternly reminded himself. She's not Dean. Focus on the moment, on reality. He made a fist with his injured hand and winced at the surge of pain. A girl sitting next to him noticed and frowned vaguely, looking like she would feel pity if she knew how, but then she went back to thumbing her phone with a slack expression.

That was another thing that had changed. This... zombie-like devotion to phones, or tablets, or whatever ridiculous device rich parents could buy for their trust-fund babies. 

_OK, Grandpa,_ Sam admonished himself again. _Focus._

The girl was looking at him again—sort of, between glances at her phone. “Do you think this will be on the test?” she asked, barely moving her mouth to speak.

Sam sighed. “I don't know,” he started to answer, then gasped. Had the girl's eyes flashed red? He groped for the gun he wasn't carrying—and didn't that make him feel naked—before he remembered to squeeze his hand again. The impression of red eyes faded as the girl gave him a half-asleep “OMG” look before returning to her phone.

The lecturer left the podium. Sam got up, moving casually down the stairs toward the front, against the tide of students leaving. He watched her walk to a short student sitting off to the side in the front row—then realized it couldn't be a student. Or he guessed it could be, what with Stanford occasionally accepting young geniuses who graduated high school at age 14 or whatever. The teenage boy—maybe pre-teen, even—stood up as the woman walked up to him. “Can we go to In-N-Out now?” he said in a high voice. It carried unexpectedly in the auditorium and several students laughed. The woman blushed as the kid hunched defensively.

“It’s OK, buddy,” the lecturer said in a quiet aside. “Yes, we’ll have lunch as soon as I answer a few questions.”

Sam had almost reached the group surrounding her. Why had he come down instead of leaving? He couldn’t remember having a question for her, but he felt drawn somehow. She smiled at him in greeting as she answered another student’s question.

“Well, if you’re Journalism, maybe you can bring some much-needed ethics to the media, if you figure it all out before you get there,” she said to general laughter. 

The professor’s kid was looking at Sam. Sam met his eyes and missed a stair, grabbing a chair-back to steady himself. A passing male student snickered at his clumsiness, but Sam barely noticed: he was locked in the kid’s suspicious glare and staggering under the weight of certainty that he knew him. Or should know him, but he couldn’t remember… God, what if he had hurt this kid, or his mother, while he was soulless? That would explain the murderous look he was giving him. Maybe he’d better leave before the kid said something to his mom, or called the cops…

Sam’s vision jerked. The light in the room got brighter for a moment as a surge of nausea hit him. The professor put a proud arm around her son. “Honey, meet your uncle, Sam,” she said, smiling broadly, and for a bare fraction of a second, Sam saw a different, horribly familiar face flash behind hers…

“Wh-what?” he gasped, clenching his fist hard.

She gave him a worried look. “I said, ‘are you majoring in Econ, Sam?’”

She looked normal now. So did the light. So did the kid, who returned his gaze to his handheld game with no sign of a glare. The lecture had been for his economics class, so her question made sense. But how did she know his name?

He must’ve said the last part out loud, because, looking more concerned than ever, she nodded at his chest. He looked down at himself and saw the “HELLO MY NAME IS” sticker on his shirt pocket, with “Sam” marked neatly in Sharpie underneath. Despite his trembling hands and racing heart, he flushed with embarrassment. He’d attended a social for students interested in law school the hour before, and he’d forgotten to take the name tag off.

He forced a laugh and got himself under control. His training in covering things up with suspicious cops came in handy. “Ha ha—sorry. I just get nervous around… I guess you’re not a celebrity, but you know what I mean.”

She looked reassured and laughed, too. “Hardly a celebrity, but I understand. Did you have a question, Sam?”

Sam scrambled to think of one as the last of the other students drifted away. This could be his last chance to figure out if there was a connection between them from his soulless time—except should he be trying to figure that out? It was best to suppress everything he could… 

He was saved by the kid breaking the brief silence to say, “Mom, I’m starving.”

The woman sighed. “Sorry, Sam. Duty calls. It was nice meeting you—”

Sam jumped on a sudden impulse. The moment her leaving became imminent, he knew he couldn’t let this go. “Hey, how about I buy you lunch? It’ll be my treat, in return for the chance to pick your brain a little more, and your son won’t have to starve while I do it.”

He gave her his most charming smile. He wasn’t as good at this as Dean was, especially in his current state, but to his surprise, it seemed to work. She smiled back. Even the kid seemed to soften a little.

“Well, I have no influence over your grade, so it’s not a conflict of interest. Said the ethics professor,” she laughed. “If you’re sure you don’t mind. James here has his heart set on In-N-Out, though. We just moved here, and he’s been hearing about how great it is, so we wanted to try it.”

“No problem. My car’s right down the block. If it’s OK with you, Dr. Lamphrey,” Sam said, finally recalling the name on the slides, “I can get us there in 20 minutes.” 

“Soon enough for starving children,” she said, giving James a jostling half-hug. “And call me Deirdre.” James jostled her back and pretended to scowl at her, but he was really smiling. He seemed downright sunny for a 13-year-old—could Sam have imagined the murderous glare?

It seemed so. As Sam drove them to lunch in the old Ford Maverick Dean had helped him buy (with semi-honest cash: they’d hustled pool) and get running, he asked Deirdre and James a few innocuous questions, and James had answered, with occasional teenage snark, but he seemed to have nothing against Sam, especially now that they were headed to In-N-Out.

James also had the advantage of candor, not yet excised by adulthood. “Why did you go to college so old?” he asked Sam after a minute or two of silence.

“James,” Deirdre murmured reflexively, but she waited for Sam’s answer.

Sam smiled ruefully. “I didn’t, originally. I came when I was 18, about ten years ago, but I never got a chance to finish. So I came back this year.”

“Why didn’t you finish?”

Inquisitive kid. Sam had a prepared answer, even if he’d hoped not to use it, and again, it wasn’t even a lie. “I followed in my dad’s footsteps. It was important to him—he wanted me to do the military thing, instead of college, in the first place. He died doing it, and so I sort of felt like I had to take his place.”

There was an awkward silence. Sam was driving, so he didn’t get a look at their reactions. Though he knew he shouldn’t, he kept talking to cover the silence. “But all that’s over now, you know… I did my duty, and I just wanted to do something different with my life, so… so here I am.”

“Here you are,” said Deirdre brightly. “And next, law school! Somehow I can’t see you in a cheap suit, chasing ambulances.”

Sam blinked as he turned into In-N-Out’s parking lot. It took him a moment to get the reference, cheap suits and ambulances having been a pretty big part of his life hunting. She’d told him about the pre-law social, but…

“Actually, I don’t know if law school is what I want anymore,” he heard himself say. Where did all this confessional talk come from? “I thought I wanted it when I was 21… not to chase ambulances, but for… justice, I guess. Now…”

There was a short silence, then James bluntly asked, “Now what?”

“That’s the question, kid,” Sam murmured as he parked. He was relieved that Deirdre and James both laughed.

They ordered their burgers and sat at a plastic table. Sam got a pang watching James dig into his two double cheeseburgers with voracious enthusiasm. 

“He’s a growing boy,” laughed Deirdre, ruffling his hair.

Sam watched the kid surreptitiously as he chatted with Deirdre. His belly still squirmed strangely when he looked at James. He must not have met him while soulless, or James would have shown some recognition by now. He’d think maybe he was just identifying with the kid, but what did his childhood have in common with James’s? Well, they were both raised by single parents—presumably; Deirdre wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and mother and son seemed closely bonded and always together. Otherwise, James seemed like a happy, normal kid—not something Sam would ever have said of himself growing up.

“Where did you grow up, Sam?” 

He wondered if she were a little bit psychic—her questions always seemed to have a window into his thoughts. James’s, too. Maybe that was what it was about him. Maybe it was simply that he liked him. Liked the kid, and the mom too. Not in a romantic way—Sam could hardly imagine something further from his mind than starting a romance right now. There was a lack of tension between them, an ease that felt... well, sisterly, Sam could only guess, never having had a sister. 

He gave the stock answer about moving around a lot as a kid. “We spent a good chunk of time in Kansas and South Dakota, but otherwise, just all over,” he said.

“Ah, a Midwestern boy,” said Deidre with a smile.

Sam supposed he was, after all. “Guilty,” he said, and they laughed.

He was glad he could make conversation with relative ease, but he had to stop himself from trying to remember, in some corner of his mind, what the case was and what information he should be trying to get from her. He reminded himself that there was no need to try to get her to touch silver or iron, or to lace her drink with holy water. All he had to do was… make friends. In fact, he didn’t even _have_ to do that.

Strange, then, that it happened anyway. They had such a great time at lunch that they made plans to meet for mini-golf that weekend—James was dying to play, and Deirdre claimed he needed someone who could challenge his great skill since she couldn’t. 

Sam worried about it for the rest of that week—mostly about whether he could pull of something as normal as mini-golf, and a little bit, reflexively, that one or both of them weren’t what they seemed, and it would be a trap. It lifted his heart, though, when Deirdre smiled and James positively lit up at the sight of him. Clearly he’d worried that Sam might not show, and for some reason, he seemed to really like Sam. Sam supposed that, with no father, he was always looking for that sort of male attention. 

He thought he should be careful, and not let the kid get too attached, nor let Deirdre think he had romantic intentions. But he found he didn’t want to be careful. He was tired of being careful, and he’d become increasingly aware that he was lonely.

“Hey, James,” he said, letting it show in his voice how glad he was to see him, and was rewarded with James shedding his teenage cool and pumping up the kid enthusiasm. Sam had known few 13-year-olds, but he found a nice balance in James: he was old enough to understand adult conversation, but young enough to abandon cool and just have a good time.

Sam got another weird twinge of familiarity when James revealed a strong competitive streak.

“This hole is really hard, but I got a hole-in-two when we did it before,” he bragged.

“I bet I can do it in three strokes or less,” Sam said, grinning at him.

“Whoever gets it in less buys hotdogs!” James crowed, and Sam grinned.

“You’re on,” he said. “But if one of us gets it through the gorilla’s legs, instead of going around the side, the other person has to buy hot dogs _and_ slushies.”

“I can do it!” James shouted, and to Sam’s surprise, he did. Sam managed it, too, but had to take an extra stroke, and so he obligingly bought slushies and hotdogs, and they found a shady spot to eat them before their next round. Deirdre begged off the second round, saying there were some e-mails she had to answer, and went to sit in the arcade while Sam and James finished their game. 

Sam was relieved that James didn’t seem to need conversation all the time. He sat quietly but companionably, slurping on his slushy, looking at Sam.

After the staring got a bit obvious, Sam finally grinned and said, “Something you wanna ask?”

“Yeah. But my mom told me not to.”

“Well,” Sam said after a moment, “I’m guessing it’ll keep bothering you until you ask, and now I’m curious, so hit me. If I think it’s something your mom won’t want you to know, I won’t answer.”

“She doesn’t not want me to know. She just thinks it’ll upset you. She thinks you have PTSD. Do you?”

Sam nodded, and James nodded, too. After another pause, he said, “Was it awful, fighting in the army?”

Sam didn’t answer for a long moment, then, ignoring the “army” part of the question, finally said, “Yeah. Awful doesn’t cover it. I…” He wasn’t sure why he said what he said next. “I don’t want you to know how awful some of the things in this world are, James.”

He glanced at the kid, worried he’d said too much. James just said, “I think my mom thinks the same thing. She knows I have to know about it sometime, but she wants to keep it nice as long as she can.”

Sam nodded, and silence fell again. After a few minutes, James asked, “Do you have bad dreams?”

“Pretty bad,” Sam admitted.

“I had bad dreams for a while after my mom and I were in a car accident. People came and pulled me out of the car right away. I wasn’t hurt, but my mom was, a little, and I was only three and didn’t know what was happening. It seemed like a really long time between when they got me out and got my mom out, though she tells me it was only a few minutes. So when I dreamt about it, I would dream that they never got her out, and I was wandering around trying to find someone to help her, and no one would.”

Sam winced. Sometimes, he was reminded, terror and trauma happened even in a life that knew nothing of monsters.

“It’s bad when dreams are from things you remember, because when you wake up, you can’t tell yourself it was just a dream,” James went on. “Because it really happened. But what I figured out that helped was, it’s not real _now._ I would just remind myself of that. If I needed to, I would go in my mom’s bedroom and see that she was there, and fine, and then I felt better.”

Sam looked at James in wonder. Unknowingly, the kid had just given him really good advice. Remember not just what’s real, but what’s here and now. Just as Dean had said: the pain in his hand was real, was here and now. It helped him leave Lucifer and the cage in the past.

They finished their game, Deirdre joining in on the last few holes, cheering and heckling them in equal measure. There was no question about whether they would see each other again. It was only a question of when.

Just like that, they were… connected. Deirdre called Sam the night before his Econ midterm to wish him luck. Sam picked James up from school one afternoon when Deirdre got stuck in traffic. No one ever mentioned ghosts or demons, except when there was a horror movie James wanted to see. (“Will you take him, Sam? I can’t stand that stuff.”) He had an eerie instinct for what James would like, and James was so easy to talk to that Sam told him… well. Far from everything, but he told stories about his childhood that were almost true, and James listened and laughed or sympathized or asked a question Sam couldn’t answer, but he tried. He always tried. 

Sam had to squeeze his wounded hand a few times every day, mostly when looking at James. He still hadn’t figured out why. But friendship, he learned, was a great way to stave off bad memories. 

Normal life. Sam had always craved it, Dean wanted it for him, and here it was. Sam just wished the nightmares would stop. In them, normal was far away, and Lucifer, or Cas, or Crowley or demons or angels or monsters, had come to take it from him and laugh that he thought he could have it. So he took sleeping pills, and studied hard, and laughed with James and Deirdre and the friends they introduced, and pretended there was no hell.

Before he knew it, there was a cap and gown hanging in his closet. Here it was. It had only taken him one school year to get caught up and finally get his B.A. Whatever happened now, he had a degree from Stanford, like he’d always wanted. He pretended not to notice how hollow that felt. He even took the LSAT, and he was pretty sure his score was going to be above the 90th percentile. 

He hadn’t applied to law school yet, though. He physically couldn’t. Even looking at the application forms made him feel sick. He saw Jessica’s face through flames every time he picked up a pen.

He’d texted Dean the time and place of the ceremony, but hadn’t heard back from him. He didn’t really expect to. At the beginning of the school year, Dean had sent Sam frequent reminders that he should be studying and not asking him questions. Sam knew that Dean and Bobby were fighting creatures called leviathan, and they sounded pretty bad, but Dean had made it clear that they could handle it, and Sam should focus on his degree.

Lately, Dean’s texts had become infrequent and increasingly cryptic. His last one was something totally uncharacteristic, abjuring Sam to avoid foods with chemicals in them and eat fruits and vegetables instead. 

_Look who’s talking,_ Sam replied. _How will you survive?_

In answer, Dean had sent him a picture of his grocery basket, full of ears of corn, apples, and a bag of carrots. Sam texted back the open-mouthed-shocked emoji. Dean hadn’t replied, and though it had only been a few days—no longer than usual—the silence felt… wrong. 

He stared at the picture. Dean’s hand was clutching the grocery basket at the edge of the frame, and Sam’s heart ached for a moment before he realized why—Dean’s knuckles were bruised and bloodied, the end of his thumbnail black like it had been smashed weeks ago. It wasn’t the injuries that caused the ache in Sam, as much as the fact that Dean must not even notice them. Otherwise he’d have kept his hand out of the picture. Sam looked down at his own hand, somehow startled to see the smooth skin, unbroken but for the scar on his palm, turning from pink to white.

Sam had a feeling that three months from now, whatever he was doing, it wouldn’t be starting law school.

He would never even have believed that three _days_ later, he would graduate from Stanford. He crossed the platform in the stadium, shook the Stanford president’s hand, and moved the tassel on his cap to the left side. He’d squeezed his hand the whole time, every minute expecting a monster to show up, or that he’d see a “glitch in the Matrix” that made him realize he’d been in a Djinn’s clutches this whole time—something, anything was bound to come along and screw it up. But it didn’t. It was real.

There were even a few cheers after his name, Deirdre’s and James’s among them. Not Dean’s, or Bobby’s. He’d imagined them showing up, but knew it was impossible, so his heart ached only a little. He had his diploma. It had never seemed like something that could happen to him, Sam Winchester.

Survivor of hell.

He _was_ alive, though… as he walked out of the stadium with the other whooping, cap-tossing graduates, he reflected on the amazing beauty of that. Mom, Dad, Jessica, countless others… they might have been here to share this moment with him, but in a second, a lifetime’s potential could end, as his had done many times… but he was here, and the sun was shining, and he was free.

Deirdre came and hugged him hard, tears in her eyes. James gave him a manly handshake, but Sam pulled him in for a hug instead. 

“Your brother didn’t make it?” Deirdre asked.

Sam hadn’t meant to mention Dean, but his nervous hopes had been on his sleeve; he’d finally had to tell Deirdre whose text he was awaiting when he kept checking his phone in the days before graduation.

“No. It’s cool.”

Deirdre looked like she wanted to say something, but she only bit her lip and looked down. She really was beautiful, he reflected. He hadn’t missed the jealous, resentful stares of his fellow male students, being seen in her company. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to go there, but knew he never would.

As he walked out of the stadium with Deirdre, he started to feel… strange. It was a bright, sunny California day, but he kept thinking he saw a black cloud rising out of the corner of his eye. Everyone looked sinister, even Deirdre and James. It hadn’t happened like this in months. He prayed he could get away from everyone before it hit hard and he said something really weird. He squeezed his hand and fought a wave of dizziness.

Deirdre hadn’t noticed anything yet. “Did you hear me, Sam? I’m sorry—we’ll have to wait until tonight to celebrate. James has exams today. He’s testing to get into the special high school for smarty-pants.” She paused to squeeze James around the shoulders; James looked stoic. “I’ve gotta drop him off, then I’m speaking at a conference a little later…”

Sam shook himself, trying to act normal. He remembered the school James was trying to get into, one of the most elite in the country. “Hey, congratulations, buddy,” he said, thumping James on the back. When James looked up, he looked strangely adult and remote. “You’re gonna kill it. Smartest kid I know.”

“Me, too,” said Deirdre, grinning and hugging James one-armed. Why did James seem unresponsive? He was an affectionate kid, normally. 

“See you tonight,” Deirdre was saying, but she sounded far away. Oh, shit. Sam’s vision was starting to swim.

“Goodbye, Sam,” James said. Why was the kid suddenly so formal? He looked… weird. Melancholy, or something. Sam opened his mouth to ask if he was OK as James turned away, but sudden nausea hit him. He fell to his knees, nearly vomiting.

“Oh, no. Whose idea were these black robes, anyway? It’s a hundred degrees out here! Sam… honey, have some water. Sit down in the shade over here…”

Sam managed not to throw up. He got to the bench in the shade and shucked off his robe; he’d worn thin pants and short sleeves underneath, so it helped. But it wasn’t the heat. It was James. Every time he looked at him, the surge of nausea came back. 

James was eerily silent as Deirdre fussed over Sam. Sam’s hunter instincts were screaming at him: _something is wrong, wrong, wrong…_

No. Screw hunter instincts. Sam squeezed his hand so hard he gasped. It was healed; it was hard to get pain from it anymore. But the _what if_ haunted him as he looked at James, serenely watching.

Inspiration struck. There were one or two “just in case” habits he hadn’t broken yet. “James, buddy—could you grab my bag? Get my flask out of it?”

Deirdre, understandably, looked disapproving; Sam gave her a sheepish grin. “It just helps when my nerves get this bad. It’s not a habit, I promise,” he said, and as James handed him the flask, he jerked the lid off with a well-timed nervous fumble, and spilled holy water all down James’ front and on his hands.

James did not react at all. Not a demon. _God damn it, Sam, get it together,_ he admonished himself. Of course, not a demon. The kid was probably nervous about his exams, and Sam was freaking out because he never thought he would graduate, and that was _it._ It was time to stop jumping at shadows.

Deirdre apologized for leaving when he wasn’t feeling well, but she was worried that James would be late for his exams. Sam shooed them away successfully, sat in the shade as the weird unreality faded, and went home.

His apartment seemed too small, and though he cranked up the AC, suffocating. He finished the Sunday New York Times crossword, but he was distracted. Nothing interested him. Paging past the crossword, he saw an article about multiple disappearances in a Washington town, and thought of demons. _Demons._ He’d almost convinced himself they weren’t real, that the last several years were one long, awful dream. He wondered if Dean had seen the article, picked up his phone to text him, tossed it irritably on the table. _No._

His mind wanted to work at the case, though. It combed over the details of the article, as well as the information that _wasn’t_ there. He wondered if whatever hunter was working it knew…

He jumped when the apartment building’s buzzer went off. It was hours before Deirdre and James were supposed to arrive.

“Yeah?” he said over the intercom.

“I’m here. It’s James.”

“Oh, come on up.” He buzzed him in, relieved for the distraction.

When he opened the door, though, James was alone. “Where’s your mom?”

“She had to run errands. I didn’t want to come, so she dropped me off first. That’s OK, right?”

It was OK, and she had done things like this before, but she had _always_ called first. Sam blinked. He thought he might be getting a little dizzy again. The worries about James were trying to return; Sam couldn’t quite push them away.

“Sure,” he said, after a short pause. “Come in. Did I miss a text? Just let me call her real quick—”

Adrenaline surged through Sam at the same moment his heart sank right through the floor; a strange combination of panic and resignation. He had reached for his cell phone, but it flew off the table and clattered to the floor. A chair slid across the floor and hit the back of his legs, forcing him to sit down.

“Sam,” said the angel inside James. “We must talk.”

* * *

He didn’t know how he could have failed to see it, even trying not to, shutting down every instinct and urge he had. The being who sat across from him bore no resemblance to a gawky pubescent boy. Strangely beautiful, despite James’ growing-too-fast, hunched frame and sprinkling of acne. There was almost a glow about him. Sam glared at him, shivering under the weight of rage and barely suppressed memories. Despair clutched at him. Even if he’d had an angel blade, he couldn’t kill the angel without killing James. A demon would almost have been a relief by comparison.

“There is nothing to fear,” said the angel. “Not from me. But there is much to fear in the world right now, and your brother is floundering.”

“Don’t try to claim that Dean sent you,” Sam snarled. “He would never do that. Even if he’d send a message by an angel, he’d never let you take an innocent kid as vessel.”

“Your nephew is fine. He is the reason I was able to find you. I knew that you would be close—blood calls to blood. He is an ideal vessel, of course. It is in your bloodline.”

The bottom dropped out of Sam’s world. He’d known. _Known._ Of course. James. Dean’s son. He fought horrible nausea. What if this angel was, somehow, Lucifer? He couldn’t get Sam, so he picked the next best thing, another Winchester, and now… Sam moaned aloud. No. He’d have given anything, everything he had, to prevent this.

“Sam. Calm down. Wait a moment.” Sam jerked back, but was unable to prevent the angel pressing a hand to his forehead, and when he did, the rising cloud of memories, and the panic it brought, receded.

“It will not last long. You will need help soon—help I cannot give, I’m afraid. But first, you must help the world, and your brother.”

“I already did. And I can’t help like this. I’m out. We agreed—”

“Your brother didn’t know what would happen when you agreed. And heaven cannot sit idly by while you two fumble to figure it out. Castiel has caused grievous harm in heaven, and here on earth. He has unleashed something unspeakable. It must be dealt with.”

“What can I do that Dean and Bobby couldn’t?”

“Your friend Bobby is dead.”

Shock coursed through Sam, and unbearable pain. No. No. It must be a mistake…

“I’m sorry to tell you this way. You would have learned of it soon, anyway. Though I fear to do so, seeing the road that Castiel went down, I would help you. I will rid the world of this scourge before I return to heaven.”

“No,” Sam growled. “No deal. You’re not screwing up James’s life. Whatever the hell else happens, you are getting _out_ of him.”

“He entered into this willingly, as you must know,” said the angel. “I told him of you, about hell and your sacrifice. I told him he could help you if he let me take him as vessel. He jumped at the chance.”

Sam fought back tears. James. “You manipulative son of a bitch.”

His mind was racing. There was only one solution he could think of, and… well. He wasn’t surprised, or in a way, even upset. He missed Dean, so much that it came to him with a sharp stab of grief, imagining Dean without Bobby, without him, in danger and in pain. He also realized that he missed more than his brother. He missed the road, and the fight. He missed the feeling of doing something for the world, something no one else could do. He hadn’t wanted to be forced. He wanted a choice, and it was before him. 

“I’ll help,” said Sam. “I’m back in, and I will be until every last leviathan is gone, at the very least. I will sign a contract in blood or whatever you want. But I have one condition, and it’s non-negotiable and it’s forever.”

“What is it?”

“You leave James, and you never come back. You never take him as vessel again, or let any other angel do it, or let them know he exists. You put the anti-angel symbols on his bones, like Cas did for me and Dean. He stays here, and goes back to his life, and he is _no part_ of this. And I swear to God, if you go back on any part of it, I will find a way to kill the angel without killing the vessel. If you know as much about us Winchesters as you claim to,” he said, giving the angel a grim smile, “you’ll know I can do it.”

The angel stared at him for a moment. Before Sam could gather another argument, he nodded briskly. “Done,” he said, and there was a glow so bright Sam was blinded, and he heard James cry out for several seconds, then the light was gone, and James was slumped on the floor, unmoving.

Sam hurried to him. “Hey,” he said, turning him over. “Hey, buddy. You OK?”

James’ eyes blinked open. He stared at Sam, a dozen different expressions flickering over his face. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, until finally he blurted, “Your brother is my _dad,_ ” and burst into tears.

* * *

_Graduated. Don’t want to go to law school. Guessing your team could use another man. Text your location?_

Sam sighed, feeling he should say a lot more, but not by text. He would let Dean tell him the news of Bobby, and deal with that grief, before he told him about his son.

He had a lot of explaining to do to James, too. The angel had only told him enough to get him to agree to be a vessel. A lot of what he’d said to Sam was news to James. Sam wasn’t sure how much he should say, but finally had just settled on as much of the truth as he could give in a short time, and a quick primer on protecting himself from the supernatural.

When James started asking him questions about Dean, Sam cut him off. “You’ll meet him,” he promised. “I gotta figure some stuff out first, then I’ll tell him about you. We’ll come back when it’s safe. Meanwhile—does your mom know where you are?”

“She thinks I’m still at the exams,” James said. “He zapped me out of there as soon as no one was looking. I never got to take any of the tests. I’ll just tell my mom I got test anxiety and ran away, and I’ll say I didn’t tell you, so you don’t get in trouble.”

“Well, I don’t know how long the ‘no trouble’ part will last,” Sam said, standing up. “C’mon. We’ve gotta get you a tattoo.” 

James was ridiculously chipper about the whole thing. As Sam drove him around the seedier part of town, trying to find a tattoo parlor that looked both clean enough to be safe and lax enough to tattoo a 13-year-old, James came up with more and more elaborate ways to explain the anti-possession tattoo, if his mom saw it, and to explain Sam’s sudden absence.

“I’ve learned something, James,” said Sam, “and that’s that the best story is as close to the truth as possible. Say that, when you got to my place after ditching your exams, I got news that things were bad with my brother, that someone close to us died, and I had to leave right away to go see him.”

James was quiet for a long time. “I’m really sorry about Bobby,” he said. “Will… will my dad be OK? And you?”

Sam started to reassure him, but found that the lie wouldn’t come to his lips. After a long silence, he said, “I don’t know.” 

James just hugged him, and walked bravely into the tattoo shop, not looking back.

* * *

_Eastern Wyoming on the 80. Heading your way. Meet in Salt Lake?_

It was the first of two texts. The second one said, _Sam I didnt want to. wanted you to have a normal life but there’s stuff I can’t say by text. we need facetime._

He thought a lot about his reply while he threw some things into a duffel. He stared for a long time at the cap and gown, then left it in the empty closet.

_I know,_ he texted, _me too. See you in Salt Lake._

The End


End file.
